Re: CTRL+V I CTRL+Y - duplicating text from current line.

Hi,

Chris Jones schrieb am 03.07.2021 um 21:50:
> Something that's been bugging me for some time.
>
> I am working on an anthology of French literature and I need to xhtml
> this renowned piece from the late 18th century:
>
> | 000 ...
> | 001 En tous lieux le cul nous appelle, <br />$
> | 002 Le cul met tous les vits en rut,$
> | 003 Le cul du bonheur est la voie,$
> | 004 Dans le cul gît toute la joie,$
> | 005 Mais, hors du cul point de salut.
> | 006 ... etc. ^
> | col. 60 ____________.
>
> To start off with the cursor is at the beginning of line 001 and I need
> to append html linebreaks to lines 002-004. Since I'd rather the source
> of the document remain somewhat legible I much prefer having the <br />
> tags well-separated from the actual text & neatly aligned in col. 60.
>
> Clarification: the dollar sign at the end of l. 002--004 is NOT part of
> the text: lacking a better solution it's only there to represent the
> end-of-line: everything beyond in the vim buffer is a NUL character!
>
> To save me some typing (and typos) this is the way I handle it:
>
> 1. f< " move cursor to the opening '<'
> 2. :set virtualedit=all " enable editing beyond end-of-line
> 3. j " move cursor l. 001 -> l 002
> 4. CTRL+V " switch to blockwise visual mode
> 5. 3j " select 1 column × 3 line block
> 6. I " (upper case) switch to 'block insert'
> 7. CTRL+Y (6 times) " 'clone' l. 001's <br /> on line 002
> 8. <ESC> " escape back to normal mode
> 9. :set virtualedit= " optional - depends on what follows
>
> After hitting <ESC> I'd expect vim to 'magically' clone the '<br />'
> already duplicated on l. 002 on lines 003-004. But nothing happens!
> I end up with my html linebreak duplicated on l. 002 and nought on l.
> 003 & 004.
>
> After tinkering with this for a little while I found that if I select
> a one-column block on col. 60 (e.g.) including all lines where I need to
> add my line breaks and then insert a space there, thus replacing the NUL
> character there by a space (but also replacing all NUL characters
> -so-to-speak- up to col. 60 by spaces the 1-8 sequence of keystrokes
> does what I intend. But that's a LOT of extra work...
>
> Is this to be expected or is it a 'feature'?

from ":help v_b_I" I guess it is the documented behaviour:

| Visual-block Insert *v_b_I*
| With a blockwise selection, I{string}<ESC> will insert {string} at the start
| of block on every line of the block, provided that the line extends into the
| block. Thus lines that are short will remain unmodified. TABs are split to
| retain visual columns. Works only for adding text to a line, not for
| deletions. See |v_b_I_example|.


> Is there a better way (excluding mouse'ing and plugin'ing) to achieve
> this?

"A" in visual block mode is expected to first extend a line if 'virtualedit'
is set to "block" or "all" and the cursor is placed beyond the end of line,
so you might want to change the first step to "t<" and the sixth one to "A".

Regards,
Jürgen

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